Review: Paywall, C Arts|C venues|C aurora

Lizzy, played by writer Neysa Killeen, wants desperately to be a journalist, but not one who simply reports the news. She wants to be an investigative journalist, exposing the injustices she sees all around her in the world, just like her hero Margot Murphy. She’s dreamed of it since she was young and saw how unfair life could be when a school bully beat up her friend Arthur without any consequences. Her problem is that after completing two degrees and working two dead-end jobs just to survive, she hasn’t managed to get her break. Instead, she sees an industry where who you know and who your family is appears much more important than how good you are. So here she is, living back home with daddy dearest, and finally about to meet her hero Margot to ask why she suddenly stopped writing many years ago.

Killeen’s Paywall is a charming one woman show that deserves much more than the three in attendance today, not that she lets this affect her performance. She rattles through her story of how she got the journalistic bug, and how try as she might, she cannot catch a break in an industry that seems a bit of an old school tie club.

But as charming as it is, the show lacks any sense of tension or drama. It needs something to drive the narrative forward with more force. The opening declaration that she has the scoop of the century never really gets enough attention. When it does reveal itself later on, it feels underplayed. It either needs to be played up as something incredible or played down as Lizzy overhyping her own insights. Similarly, the whole play should be framed around the question of whether Lizzy is a good journalist or not, but instead there are very mixed messages throughout. Maybe that’s because it can be both, and Lizzy is a poor writer who stumbles across an incredible scoop, but it needs to be clearer. Killeen no doubt already knows the answer, but she needs to allow her audience to understand it too.

What Paywall does wonderfully is its fantastic character development. Lizzy is just marvellous, even if her journalistic credentials are not 100% clear! She is driven, she is clearly bitter about her perceived injustices, and yet even as she delivers her blunt assessments on people around her (her funeral work is delightful), it’s impossible not to like her. Instead, you see another young artist fighting a sytem that cares more about money and connections than actual talent, a common theme I’m seeing in Edinburgh this year.

Best of all is her writing when she finally meets Margot, demanding to know why she stopped her career in journalism. The inspired choice to have Lizzy and Margot’s conversation as voice overs, while Killeen’s onstage Lizzy outlines the words she has written for her article, is incredibly amusingly and cleverly thought out. It is strong enough to create the basis for a future rewrite, or even to use elsewhere to show how Lizzy is thinking.

Paywall is one of those shows that feels it has a long way to go to find its final version. It’s already fun and charming, but it needs to find its killer story.

Written by Neysa Killeen

Directed by Licie Wood

Paywall plays at studio at C ARTS | C venues | C aurora until Sunday 30 August as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.